Review by Jess
It's sad how the fact that there are loopholes in the system for squatters like him and they know it, yet nothing is done to change the law. This is just proof of 1 guy, only 1 guy, who cheated and changed so many people's lives. Can you imagine how many more are out there doing the same things to terrorize more people? How can there be nothing done in this situation?
Secondly, Harry brought upon his own death too. Not being an a** about it but people need to learn blood don't mean family. Jamison clearly has major problems that he was willing to overlook and bail out twice in a row (as if those weren't any red flags that something bad wrong is up with Jamison) I would've never bailed him out at all. If one person claimed something bout my brother if might just be that one person but if there's soooo many out there where you can basically google him? Another red flag. It's just sad that, that one person who genuinely wanted to help Jamison was actually murdered by the exact same person.
Lastly, Jamison actually found a perfect place he could squat for free but sadly, it seems like he preferred to have someone living with him that he could manipulate so he feels good about himself or something. Guess he can't handle being alone and not doing damage in anyone else's life. But he did take the easy way out, after ruining so many people's lives, he still chose to end his life in his own terms, just like how that lady said it. It's kinda tragic but it was a path he chose.
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@neko0nna I completely agree w/ Bachman's brother dying. You reap what you sow, and frankly, he deserved it. If you're willing to bail out someone who has spent their adult life terrorizing single women in their homes for the sport of it, you get what you have coming to you. I also felt similarly about his childhood friend. He kept trying to mitigate the damage this absolute terrorist of human being wreaked in these women's lives. I didn't need to listen to 20 minutes of him over two episodes talk about what a great guy he was. He wasn't...ever. People like his friend are dangerous, b/c they'll make apologies for those who cause serious harm to others, which, in my mind, makes them just culpable.
Well, I would have had more fun, I think, if I was aged between 6 and 25 years. Waaaay too many corny jokes & stupid, added plot lines just to progress the story along - yawn. The "tell it to me like I'm 5 years old" type of story telling - this happens for the first 20 minutes or so. Then you have to add in the scenes that make your eyes roll and the bad jokes that make you want to cringe at times, hard! All forced comedy.
Light at the end of the tunnel...maybe, but nope. When it gets a little bit better going, it's enjoyable, I settled in for some fun Marvel action but soon after, here comes the kid gloves, the really annoying Asian sidekick/girlfriend Aquafina something and oh, wait, not a single sign of blood or broken body parts nor any convincing deaths shown given the type of power being dealt out. At times it felt like a Disney action movie for pre-schoolers I'd say.
It has its pluses with the Excellent karate and stunts, CGI too.
But man, this was not made for anyone to really enjoy a fine, 'take me away into fantasy', not if you are over 30+ years imo. Or only if you are perhaps a huge comic nerd and man-baby.
Fair rating from me, but I'd Not watch again unless I'm about 75 years old and infantile again.
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@purgatory Illiterate, misogynistic, and racist...every white nationalist's trifecta.
This is probably one of the worst episodes of the show. Pierce is an awful character, and while the show labels him a racist and homophobe they are also using him as an excuse to make racist and homophobic jokes. This episode starts with Shirley (who is very much problematic as well) standing up for herself against Pierce's racism and sexual harassment, and would have been a good way for the show to say "Hey! It's not cool for people to make offensive jokes!" and either write Pierce's character out of the show or reform his character, but the show does neither. Instead they for some incomprehensible reason make Shirley and Pierce friends without him having apologised for his behaviour. (He uses a bullshit excuse that basically boils down to "sexual harassment is a compliment because you're a strong woman and I like you.") Therefore sending the message that you should respect your oppressors instead of standing up to them, because "peace" is better than change, and because you need to be the better person.
The side plot of Jeff and Britta acting like teenagers in some sort of weird competition with actual teenagers is just a waste of screen time and not funny at all. The only purpose that plot has is to establish that they are insecure, but this could've been done a lot better.
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@amberrav I completely agree w/ your point of view. Much of the setting in this show, as well as others, is pretense to make jokes that are, in nature, nothing more than racist and/or misogynistic. A great example of this was something I finally sat down to watch recently: How I Met Your Mother. That was some of the most hatefully misogynistic crap that I’ve ever had the displeasure of watching. It really made me wonder how awful the showrunners and writers really were. The same applied w/ Community. As revered as Dan Harmon was, was I thoroughly unsurprised when he confirmed that he’d engaged in sexual harassment in the workplace. When we have someone like that running a show, episodes like The Art of Discourse are what we get.
Calvin is a genuinely bad person. I give the narrative credit for letting Ruby be an actual person and not just a MPDG before Calvin began tinkering with her, but they undercut that by giving him hope in the end.
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@geekdame Exactly this. No amount of melancholy music in the end was going to make him anything other than what he was: A misogynist. The most disturbing part of this film was that it was written by Zoe Kazan. It's hard to believe that a woman would write this, but it does make sense, b/c many women believe that this is appropriate behavior, and since Calvin set her free in the end, it absolved him of his previous transgressions, and it meant that he really did love her, when, in actuality, he had no idea what it meant to love another person.
Shout by NicsTrakts
The coolest part about this movie was learning more about Inuit culture and the hugely indigenous cast. Other than that it was a total white savior movie. I still enjoyed it until about the middle when the classic hopeful, cool teacher music began to play. I’m glad this story was told but the execution could have been much better.
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@nicstrakts You summed this up quite nicely. I completely agree about how this movie showed what the Inuit culture is really like and how the indigenous cast really made this film what it was. After having watched it, I was reading up on it a bit, and I discovered that Emerald MacDonald, who played Miranda Atatahak, was murdered in Kugluktuk, Nunavut in 2021. That was just heartbreaking to find out.
"I'd forgotten that lesson, which I had learned on every story I ever did. It was that there are no real villains in life, not really. There are no real heroes, either. Everyone is great and everyone is terrible and everyone is flawed, and there are no exceptions to that."
This episode was incredible. The show is amazing in showing the complexities of trauma and how ill-equipped we are to navigate it for ourselves and others. What a build up. What a climax! So good and so well done. Very well acted, amazing performance by Claire Danes.
Finally we see things from Rachel's pov! What really stood out to me is that she didn't paint Toby in a negative light in her mind. Unlike him. I really enjoy stories where you think you have all the information, then a new perspective flips things on their head. Everyone, and I really mean it, everyone failed Rachel, it was example after example of the people meant to be there for you emotionally too caught up in their own things to stop and listen. But the comment Toby says to her, "But you are not taking the kids, okay? Honestly, t-they wouldn't even notice if you were gone." caused her to spiral and go against her better judgment. That was so cruel. Imagine hearing that when you're already struggling and barely holding on. At the end, she has a breakdown, which is understandable. She even forgot her relationship with Sam was strictly an affair and she emotionally tried to open up to him.
It really bothered me when Toby said, "there's my wife" when Rachel smiled after her support group meeting. Like, she's still your wife even when she's depressed. Seeing Rachel's perspective makes Toby look like a real asshole.
While I sympathize with her hospital experience (what that doctor did to her would literally traumatize me to my core) and subsequent postpartum depression, I still find her lacking in values or moral compass because she is part of an extramarital affair. The idea is that both Toby and Rachel are extremely flawed characters but not monsters. All of us are "wonderful and terrible, no one is truly good or evil," as Libby said. One of the main themes of the show is that nobody is a hero or a villain. We are all just flawed people. If you need to like the characters to like a show, this one is not for you.
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@cutecruel I greatly appreciated your write-up of this episode. Thank you for posting it. I also found it quite interesting how we thought that we understood the basis of Toby and Rachel's relationship and the reason for their divorce. However, we'd previously only seen it from his point of view. During his version of events, Rachel came across as career- and status-obsessed, and while some of that may have been true, during the marital discord, it turned out that Toby was the one in the relationship who kept threatening to end the marriage. in his retelling, it made it seem that she was the pursuer of divorce. In finding out this information, it made it more understandable how Rachel would engage in an extramarital affair. While it didn't make it right, holding a relationship over someone's head was a good way to push that other person into someone else's arms. It painted a clearer picture of what had really occurred.
I hate the main character. He is so irredeemably unlikable, it's practically unfathomable that someone would write this, and it would get greenlit for production. Aside from being more boring than watching paint dry, one of the oddest things about this show, which is incredibly irritating, is the audio. In at least two of the first five episodes, they employed this background audio, which in one case sounded like a cellphone notification and in the other, a high-pitched squeal. I can't believe that no one caught this in post, b/c it's so hideous to listen to.
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@lnero I agree. Diego Luna is a particularly talented actor and quite charming. It's unfortunate that what he was given to work w/ here was so subpar. My take on this was a bit over the top, but the more I've watched of this, the more I realize that much of what they made are simply Empire policy meetings. I'm surprised that they thought this would be captivatingly interesting, since The Phantom Menace debacle. If this type of activity were so well-received, C-SPAN would be one of the most popular channels on TV. I don't understand it, but then again, I see lots of media, where I can't imagine how a roomful of adults agreed that what I just watched was a good idea to spend millions of dollars on.
Review by Marcelain
VIP7Went into this thinking that the discourse online and similar think pieces HAD to be overblown and had to admit, they had good gripes.
If this were almost any other director this film would be such a bigger issue and is that right? Every "cinephile" adores PTA so he gets a pass from people?Some other thoughts:
- Wanted to leave the film thinking everyone is overhyping Alana Haim, and jokes fucking on me because she slays
- Should a 25 yr old female and 15 yr old male romcom be celebrated?
- Regardless of if they spend the rest of their lives together or not, does that negate the fact that the relationship is being celebrated?
- Should it just be swept under the rug of "welp, this was what the 70s was like"?
- Why does the Asian bit play for laughs?!? Why include it at all when it serves no purpose to the plot and is only a low hanging fruit chuckle from the crowd?
- I love Benny Safdie, but should he have been cast in this role as a closeted individual when there is otherwise so much pressure to accurately cast actors for those roles?loading replies
@marcelain I really appreciated your response. You touched on a number of issues that I considered while watching this film. First off, in regard to John Michael Higgins' character, I'm completely w/ you on that. I have no idea why that was included in this film, and I'm shocked that it made the final cut. It literally served no purpose. Second, regarding the character of Joel Wachs, I also agree that someone from the LGBTQ+ community should've played this role. Turning to the relationship between Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman, it was definitely questionable. However, I can see how this played in 1979, b/c I was there, and these types of relationships weren't scrutinized the way they are now. And, this film wasn't a critique of this time-period, it was only a reflection of it, so their relationship fit w/in that scope. I think that any celebration of this would be from those who watched the film, and that would clearly be wrong.
And, you're dead-on about Alana Haim! She absolutely killed it in this film. I was so impressed w/ talent, and I can't wait to see her in other roles. She was really remarkable in a role that I imagine wasn't easy to capture the voice of.
Solid movie. A perfect balance of levity and psych thriller. I didn’t come away feeling 100% satisfied, but it was very enjoyable nonetheless.
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@magic_claw You explained this well and touched on my exact sentiments of the film.
Shout by Michael Adams
VIP3“This Facebook group lynched him”... and then you decided to stay in the group. Alright.
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@michdavidadams This isn't accurate. They were concerned that the man some of them felt had committed the animal abuse had been unfairly accused, and that may have contributed to his choice to take his own life. At that point, they didn't stay in the group. They formed their own secret group, b/c they didn't believe that the man who had been named was the correct individual.
Lily is so hypocritical. She most likely had sex with a guy or two when she was in San Francisco, yet when Marshall is simply dating someone else other than her for the first time, she intervenes. Not to mention, she called off the engagement.
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@legendaryfang56 "She most likely had sex with a guy or two when she was in San Francisco..." Why, b/c you hate women, so they must do things that make them liars and hypocrites? Maybe try being lot less misogynistic and sexist.
For the first time, I agree with Ted when he said Lily caused it, and that she's selfish and immature.
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@legendaryfang56 Yeah, wanting to understand who she is outside of her relationship, so she can be wholly committed to that relationship w/out questioning who she is makes her a terrible person. Ted was never right about anything, ever. He was bigoted, sexist, misogynist, b/c the men who wrote him are like that, and they think that there's some sort of comedic value to it. Ted lied, manipulated, insinuated, intentionally damaged the feelings and lives of others, imposed upon, used force to get his way, and disregarded others like the near-sociopath he was. This show should've been called How I Did Whatever I Felt Like Doing in Order to Get What I Wanted While Disregarding Everyone Else and Treating Women as Less Than Human.
Shout by Lineage
What's the problem with being a prostitute? I'm a little annoyed with Ted, Marshall, and Lily having such a big problem with it.
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@legendaryfang56 Exactly this. It's a bunch of entitled white people sitting around slut-shaming sex workers. I'm not even through the first season of this show, and each episode extends Ted's awfulness to new levels. At a certain point, I realized that it was about the men writing this crap. They were the people who had no problem w/ his behavior and thought that it was comical.
It was a good first episode. I hope this contues. I don't get all the hate. But if I am guessing right, people didn't like how she-hulk is instantly able to perform stuff better than bruce.
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@drbi It's not that complicated. The hate is due to the fact that she's a woman, and the show deals w/ issues related to the daily lives of women, who are sexually harassed and assaulted and domestically abused by men.
Shout by dilek
I had such high hopes but this season has been a real disappointment. It doesn't even feel like there's a main story. Like they had trouble making connection between the episodes.
And wtf kind of season finale is that? It's like "hey, we have no idea what we gonna do with the main characters of this series. So, here, just have some batman and joker story to get you hyped till we figure it out. See you next season!"
Everything felt so rushed and we didn't get any closure. Maybe it would have worked better with a 23 episodes format. I hope season 2 will get us somewhere.loading replies
@dlk I'm watching this four years after the fact, and you hit the nail on the head w/ your review. My feeling going into this was that Berlanti and Johns made a lot of garbage w/ the DC shows they produced for over-the-air broadcast. This had a very similar feel w/ cursing thrown in. Their storylines on the other DC shows they'd created produced much of the same all-over-the-place storytelling. You were right about this having a chance for promise, but they really screwed it up.
Review by jmg999
This was fucking horrific. This scriptwriter should be forced to find a new career. The second that Rosamund Pike was kidnapped, I thought to myself, "He's either going to propose, or they're going to go into business together." The problem was in getting to the point, where this actually happened. These Russian mobsters must've been the most incompetent buffoons on the planet to not be able to finish off two individuals, who they'd already pretty much brought to w/in an inch of their life. This was such an incredible stretch that it made this movie absolutely ridiculous.
Aside from this, the fact that the writer tried to make these two women sympathetic characters screams that there's something really off w/ this writer. On what planet are people who take advantage of, and essentially murder, some of the most vulnerable members of society sympathetic?
On one last note, I've never been a fan of Rosamund Pike. I'd seen her in two previous films, where she was not good at all: Jack Reacher and Gone Girl. In the former, she's so melodramatic, it's difficult to watch, and it's even more difficult to take her character seriously. In the latter, although she's playing a character w/ Antisocial Personality Disorder, that doesn't necessarily mean someone devoid of affect, which is exactly how she played that role. She may as well have been a talking stump in that movie. I realize that she received industry-wide recognition for the latter role, but I prescribe this to the industries' complete and utter lack of understanding of psychological disorders and their accompanying attributes.
I wasn't going to watch this film b/c of my distaste for Ms. Pike's acting ability, but the movie, on its own, won such rave reviews, I figured that I'd give it a chance. However, something about her just wasn't right. She had this odd grin in a lot of scenes, where it either didn't fit, or it seemed like it would've been inappropriate, if it had been a real-life situation. I just find her acting to be really off-putting. Luckily, both Peter Dinklage and Dianne Wiest are always top-notch performers.
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@lnero Thank you for your response. Admittedly, my original post was quite over the top. Obviously, I felt that the script was flawed, but aside from that, I clearly felt that Ms. Pike's portrayal of the character in this film felt a bit off. I don't believe that she was meant to be a sociopath in this film, but she was playing someone w/ antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) in Gone Girl. In that role, she played it cool meaning that she played the entire film w/ a blank stare. It was unrealistic of those w/ ASPD. I take somewhat of an affront to some of these characterizations, b/c I studied research psychology in grad school, so I'm more familiar w/ personality disorders than most screenwriters. If you take a look at this link, it'll show you the criteria for ASPD in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-V) (https://www.psi.uba.ar/academica/carrerasdegrado/psicologia/sitios_catedras/practicas_profesionales/820_clinica_tr_personalidad_psicosis/material/dsm.pdf).
ASPD, in addition to being indicative of the listed criteria, is often comorbid for other personality disorders, or at the very least, certain criteria of other personality disorders, since a certain number of criteria must be met in order for a diagnosis of a given personality disorder to be made. If you're interested in this, there was a study performed in 2013, where forensic psychiatrists and cinema critics selected 126 fictional, psychopathic characters based on "the realism and clinical accuracy of their profiles" (https://www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/leistedt2013.pdf). They listed the most accurate portrayals based on this analysis. There was also an article written about this empirical research document (https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/gory-details/most-and-least-realistic-movie-psychopaths-ever).
Just a side note, psychopathy isn't a recognized personality disorder in the DSM-V. It was removed after the DSM-III and replaced w/ ASPD, which focused more on the behavioral aspects of psychopathy and less on the personality characteristics (https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/03/ce-corner-psychopathy).
Can't wait, wish I could find out a release date.
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@kingy72 If you haven't heard already, it's premiering on January 15, 2023.
AWH MAN!!! I thought it was coming this year!!! That sucks!!! :rolling_eyes:
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@cinematicthrowbacks Yeah, you can. Just unselect it.
I felt that this show really should be evaluated in three parts, as it’s almost as if there were three shows in one. The first season was based on the novel of the same name, so the writers had clearly marked signposts to follow. As the novel was quite compelling, so too was the first season of the show. However, this is where the book ended, and the writers had to take up the slack. The natural progression of events led them to follow the court case surrounding the death of Hannah Baker, as well as the criminal trial of Bryce Walker..
I felt that these two seasons should be evaluated in terms of being different shows. The first season was clearly the best season of the four b/c, that’s the material the book covered, and the writers didn’t have to come up w/ any of their own material. The second season, although panned by some fans and critics, still followed the same themes of the first season, yet it was not up to par in terms of storyline or writing.
The third and fourth seasons should be considered a third show all on their own. While they did stick to similar themes from the first and second seasons, the writers clearly had no plan in place to go beyond the end of the novel. These last two seasons, especially, felt completely disjointed from the first two. The third season was long and drawn out, and the payoff in the end was neither surprising nor all that interesting. If they had maintained more of a mysterious atmosphere over what they were doing, it might have been better.
The fourth season was just a mess. Watching a main character who’s moody, bitter, angry, intense, depressed, and slipping into schizophrenia is not a compelling watch. They began this in season three and continued on in season four. It really added no particular value to the show or the character of Clay.
As for the storyline in the final season, it was absolutely ludicrous. I won’t go into the details, but suffice it to say, the writers really didn’t put much thought into what they were doing. The last two episodes of the show were especially pointless. The prom episode was completely unnecessary, as was the finale, at least the way it was filmed. And, it certainly didn’t require 90 minutes to portray the events of what happened in the finale. Not to mention, the last scene of the show was absolutely awful.
I think that the worst part of this show, however, was the treatment of two characters, Bryce Walker and Montgomery de la Cruz. In the third season, the writers actually spend quite a few resources rehabilitating the image of Bryce, as if there was some redemption to be had for him. He was a serial predator, and his actions would have stemmed from a deep-seated psychological disorder that wouldn’t have simply gone away, b/c he acknowledged his wrongdoing and felt bad about it. They did something similar w/ Monte in the fourth season, and I felt that it was incredibly disingenuous, dangerous, and irresponsible to take this path, b/c it showed that they really hadn’t researched the topics they were writing about. It was really surprising to watch this, and even both of Jessica’s relationships w/ Justin and Diego were quite questionable, especially given her role as head of the women’s rights movement on campus.
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@jlucascaraujo To be fair, you are correct. I could have worded this better. In this case, w/ this particular writing team and this particular actor, I found it neither compelling nor necessary to the storyline/theme of the show. You made a good point w/ The Silver Linings Playbook. There are certainly a number of movies about the compelling nature of psychological disorders and phenomena that affect people in their daily lives. Black Swan and A Beautiful Mind are also very good examples, where the descent into schizophrenia was explored in detail w/ much stronger actors. While Black Swan took a more artistic approach, A Beautiful Mind took a more clinical approach that stuck to psychological realities that empirical research has shown. However, both movies proved worthwhile viewing in helping the public understand more about this insidious disorder.
It was a decent movie but has NOTHING to do with adderall...? I didn't even hear adderall mentioned at all, so its a pretty misleading title
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@lexirae26 It was a main theme of the novel. It's really surprising that the filmmakers chose not to even make mention of it in the film, especially w/out changing the title.
great but why is it a weekly release? The show, so far at least, is written for binge-viewing.
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@sech11 Marketing and social media studies have shown that even particularly popular and well-reviewed shows, such as Stranger Things, that are released all at once have a "water-cooler moment" that is exponentially shorter than popular and well-reviewed shows that are released incrementally, such as The Boys. This starts from the top-down, so critics will review what's available, and if a season is aired in one day, there's only a short-lived period of time, where critics will write about the content, thus driving social media platform discussions for a shorter period of time. On the other hand, if a season is aired incrementally over the course of months, critics will necessarily write more content over a longer period of time on the topic, thus driving greater online discussions over a longer period of time. In the end, it's all designed to keep these shows in the public's stream of consciousness for as long as possible.
I do like that it doesn't treat the flat earth bunch as psychos or make fun of them, but there's lots of jaw dropping weird in there provided handily by the subjects.
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@xinit The problem is, by engaging these cranks, they are empowering them w/ credibility. These people have no evidence to back their claims. Not only that, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence to support them, and they don't even have the slightest evidence to support what they're saying. Just b/c someone has an ignorant, uneducated opinion about something doesn't mean that they're deserving of being part of the public discourse on the subject.
If I stated, "Topsoil is made of marshmallows," this shouldn't require the greatest scientific minds of the world to stop their important, life-changing works to confront me. I should be dismissed out of hand, unless I can offer some sort of relevant evidence that this is a plausibility. That's the problem here. These people are being given credence that they aren't deserving of, b/c they decided to take up a stance based on nothing more than puerile ignorance. It's harmful, and it's dangerous, and people like this should not be part of the public discourse on any subject, b/c their credibility is shot the moment they spout garbage like this.
This is literally one of the worst films I've ever had the displeasure to watch. In fact, it was practically unwatchable. The cinematography and direction were awful, the script appears to have been written by someone who doesn't speak English, b/c no one in the world speaks the way these characters spoke in this film, the acting was downright terrible (Kyle MacLachlan is not a good actor, and Dennis Hopper is about as menacing as a declawed kitten), the story is ungodly boring, and the special effects, such that they were, look like a fourth grader's attempt at becoming involved in filmmaking. If I live to be 1000-years-old, I will never understand people's affection for David Lynch.
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@the_argentinian It never ceases to surprise that given a rational commentary, someone will offer a reply similar to yours. You offer nothing of substance or value and instead, simply attempt to demean by implying my youth, even when there's nothing to indicate such. This ad-hominem attack only serves to solidify my point of view, since you're clearly uneducated and ignorant, and you bring nothing of value or substance to this, or any, debate.
FBI/ATF trying to cover one mess by creating another. So many innocent dead. Truly heartbreaking. Good series, worth checking out.
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@khawlah Innocent? Are you as mentally ill as these child molestors and rapists were? They allowed some fucking mutt to rape women and children. Get a fucking grip!
